Several people have asked me how long the quiet period at Prosper will last. Of course I can only speculate, but it seems like it will be at least several months. Lending Club was out for about 6 months, but I would hope Prosper’s quiet period would be significantly shorter since Lending Club has already “blazed the trail” so to speak.

While I’m disappointed to see Prosper close down for an extended period of time, this quiet period is good news in several ways as well. First, by taking the risk of closing down for several months (with very little revenue coming in during that time) Prosper is showing that they fully intend to stick around. This is a necessary but painful investment in the future of their platform and the fact that they are making it shows that they are in it for the long haul. Second, when the secondary market opens, it will likely bring in more lending cash from people who weren’t so thrilled with the idea of having their money locked up for 3 years. It will also allow those current lenders who want to “get out” a means to do so. Finally, on a personal note, it’ll give me some time to catch up on things, and hopefully get some work done on lendingclubstats.com as well

After much waiting and a few false starts, loanio (a new p2p lending outfit) has finally launched. This is something that I’m especially excited about as I have been consulting with Loanio CEO Michael Solomon about the site for going on two years now. It’s great to see this finally come to fruition.

There are a few new features on Loanio that I really like. The Co-Borrower feature allows borrowers to add a co-signer to their loan. For lower credit borrowers, who have access to a co signer with better credit, this can give them a much better chance of funding, and hopefully less risk for the lenders as well. Another feature on Loanio is the “partial funding” feature that allows a borrower to accept a loan even if it doesn’t get fully funded (subject to a minimum of 35% funded). This should help many kinds of borrowers (especially consolidation type loans where something is better than nothing) and reduce the frustration caused by re-listing. It should hopefully help lenders as well by getting their funds in play quickly with fewer bid refunds due to unfunded listings.

Loanio is still a brand new platform and missing some of the things I’ve gotten used to on Prosper (e.g. portfolio plans). I know many of those features are currently in development (as well as some very cool brand new things..) and should come on line once they are ready for prime-time.

Looks like they are having some launch-day website hiccups as well..  I’m told to try using “https://www.loanio.com” rather than the regular “http” version and it should work.